Pervasive NFC-based solution for the analysis of tourism data in an environment of smart cities

Abstract

Detailed recording and analysis of visitor paths and individual mouse movements in real time of tens-of-thousands of visitors is one of the most important areas of tourism research, and to observe tourist movements a variety of techniques are available. New tracking techniques are explored and due to the advance of technology we can have information at any time and from anywhere (pervasive computing). This has been used to record movement information of tourists with high resolution. In these environments (tags environments) where the user interacts with the environment, an emerging technology called NFC (Near Field Communication) is providing a natural means of interaction between the users and their environment. This paper shows the implementation of an NFC-based pervasive solution that allows tourist tracking data to be obtained in real time; it is simplified and analyzed with the Markov chains method by experimental and statistical testing. It is also demonstrated that the movement of a tourist is influenced by the state or tourist site where he or she is to move to another, corroborating the hypothesis "that if you can capture the information left by tourists through technological tools, thanks to the processing of such information you can obtain a trace that is a sample of the activity which, through its display, allows decisions that promote tourism as part of the regional and national economy".